The Return of the Passenger Pigeon
by HOLLAND E. SHAW
My father lies buried on Pigeon Hill, only a mile from where he was born in New England. While hiking this wooded hill as a boy, I once asked him about the origin of the name. His answer initiated the most intriguing study of my life.
For nearly thirty years I have read the vivid and baleful accounts of the extinct Passenger Pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius). This has given me a perspective on American natural history centered on a search for traces of a missing entity. I am aware of a sad, pervasive void in our modern sky and tend to see long cirrus clouds as living rivers, oceans of migrating "wild pigeons." Anecdotes and ghostly visions are all that remain of what was North America's most spectacular natural phenomenon.
The Passenger Pigeon, unknown to the generations of the past one hundred years, was both graceful and beautiful as an individual, and it possessed a spectacular and wondrous quality as a species. It strikes me that the Passenger Pigeon was the very symbol of pristine North America. Had it been allowed to nest unmolested, as it had for so many thousands of years, future generations would have continued to derive awe and inspiration as did eyewitnesses of the past. Chief Simon Pokagon, a Michigan Potawatomi, wrote: "If the Great Spirit in His wisdom could have created a more elegant bird in plumage, form and movement, He never did. I have seen them move in one unbroken column for hours across the sky, like some great river, ever varying in hue; and as the mighty stream, sweeping on at sixty miles an hour, reached some deep valley, it would pour its living mass headlong down hundreds of feet, sounding as though a whirlwind was abroad in the land. I have stood by the grandest waterfall of America and regarded the descending torrents in wonder and astonishment, yet never have my astonishment, wonder and admiration been so stirred as when I have witnessed these birds drop from their course like meteors from heaven."
by HOLLAND E. SHAW
My father lies buried on Pigeon Hill, only a mile from where he was born in New England. While hiking this wooded hill as a boy, I once asked him about the origin of the name. His answer initiated the most intriguing study of my life.
For nearly thirty years I have read the vivid and baleful accounts of the extinct Passenger Pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius). This has given me a perspective on American natural history centered on a search for traces of a missing entity. I am aware of a sad, pervasive void in our modern sky and tend to see long cirrus clouds as living rivers, oceans of migrating "wild pigeons." Anecdotes and ghostly visions are all that remain of what was North America's most spectacular natural phenomenon.
The Passenger Pigeon, unknown to the generations of the past one hundred years, was both graceful and beautiful as an individual, and it possessed a spectacular and wondrous quality as a species. It strikes me that the Passenger Pigeon was the very symbol of pristine North America. Had it been allowed to nest unmolested, as it had for so many thousands of years, future generations would have continued to derive awe and inspiration as did eyewitnesses of the past. Chief Simon Pokagon, a Michigan Potawatomi, wrote: "If the Great Spirit in His wisdom could have created a more elegant bird in plumage, form and movement, He never did. I have seen them move in one unbroken column for hours across the sky, like some great river, ever varying in hue; and as the mighty stream, sweeping on at sixty miles an hour, reached some deep valley, it would pour its living mass headlong down hundreds of feet, sounding as though a whirlwind was abroad in the land. I have stood by the grandest waterfall of America and regarded the descending torrents in wonder and astonishment, yet never have my astonishment, wonder and admiration been so stirred as when I have witnessed these birds drop from their course like meteors from heaven."
Native Americans were not the only ones in awe of these flocks. In 1866, W. Ross King wrote: "Hurrying out and ascending the grassy ramparts, I was perfectly amazed to behold the air filled and the sun obscured by millions of pigeons, not hovering about, but darting onwards in a straight line with arrowy flight, in a vast mass a mile or more in breadth, and stretching before and behind as far as the eye could reach. Swiftly and steadily the column passed over with a rushing sound, and for hours continued in undiminished myriads advancing over the American forests in the eastern horizon, as the myriads that had passed were lost in the western sky."
The migrating flocks of the Passenger Pigeon were indelibly recorded in the memories of all who were privileged to experience these scenes. Sometimes these flocks were even frightening.
"As the first streakings of daylight began to break over the eastern horizon, small scouting parties of the monstrous army of birds to follow, every now and then darted like night spirits past our heads. . . . And now arose a roar, compared with which all previous noises ever heard are but lullabies, and which caused more than one of the expectant and excited party to drop their guns and seek shelter behind and beneath the nearest trees. The sound was condensed terror. Imagine a thousand threshing machines running under full headway, accompanied by as many steamboats groaning off steam, with an equal quota of R.R. trains passing through covered bridges—imagine these massed into a single flock, and you possibly have a faint conception of the terrific roar following the monstrous black cloud of pigeons as they passed in rapid flight in the gray light of morning, a few feet before our faces." (Schorger 1955).
The migrating flocks of the Passenger Pigeon were indelibly recorded in the memories of all who were privileged to experience these scenes. Sometimes these flocks were even frightening.
"As the first streakings of daylight began to break over the eastern horizon, small scouting parties of the monstrous army of birds to follow, every now and then darted like night spirits past our heads. . . . And now arose a roar, compared with which all previous noises ever heard are but lullabies, and which caused more than one of the expectant and excited party to drop their guns and seek shelter behind and beneath the nearest trees. The sound was condensed terror. Imagine a thousand threshing machines running under full headway, accompanied by as many steamboats groaning off steam, with an equal quota of R.R. trains passing through covered bridges—imagine these massed into a single flock, and you possibly have a faint conception of the terrific roar following the monstrous black cloud of pigeons as they passed in rapid flight in the gray light of morning, a few feet before our faces." (Schorger 1955).
When Verrazano and Champlain sailed down the New England coast the population of the Passenger Pigeon ranged between three billion and five billion. It may therefore have comprised as much as 40 per cent of the total bird population of the United States (Schorger 1955). Yet despite the fact that the Passenger Pigeon was the most common bird in North America and presumably the single most numerous in the world, it was driven into extinction by 1914, through market hunting and habitat destruction. There have been few ecological tragedies in American history to rival the wanton slaughter of this species. The extinction of Ectopistes migratorius was brought about by the pervasive attitude that abundance has no end.
There were, of course, voices of alarm: "The wholesale slaughter of these birds at their nesting place in Monroe County last spring when not half grown, and even before they were feathered, was disgracefully notorious at the time. One man shipped over two million of these birds out of the county and the ground was so strewn with the carcasses of young pigeons, too small for shipment, that for three weeks there was an area of several miles where such a stench arose as to sicken travelers" (Milwaukee [Wisconsin] Sentinel, 15 March 1883. Schorger 1955).
Mankind, for reasons of ignorance and greed, systematically destroyed the beech, oak, and conifer forest nesting sites of the "blue meteors," until their numbers went from billions to a single bird in a mere fifty years. Barrels containing millions of squabs and adult birds were shipped to market. Every imaginable method was used to destroy the species while every imaginable excuse was justification for a more and more rapid extermination. Perhaps the spectacular spring migrations of the Passenger Pigeon would have no place in the twenty-first century, just as no place was afforded them in the twentieth. Nonetheless, I have often wished that I could experience these titanic visions or at the very least a single living specimen.
Late in the nineteenth century and in the first decade of the twentieth, Professor Charles Ottis Whitman bred the last known flock of Passenger Pigeons. With each succeeding year and each successive death, the species diminished. Their remains were mounted, preserved in alcohol, skinned and dried, or thoughtlessly destroyed, as hope dimmed of there ever being a viable population. Finally, in the year of Whitman's death, 1910, the last remaining male died, followed in 1914 by "Martha," the last Passenger Pigeon the world would ever see. Extinction is irreversible. Or is it?
I once read an account of a young couple in 1877 using the feathers of over 1700 wild pigeons to stuff their feather bed. The practice was apparently common and may well have been encouraged by the ancient belief that a person could not die on a bed of pigeon feathers. In our current age of genetic engineering, I have started to wonder, is there an irony in the old superstition? Could the feathers of such a long-forgotten flock assist in the resurrection of the Passenger Pigeon itself? Could the genes of such feathers and preserved specimens in general be used someday in a recombinant DNA project?
There were, of course, voices of alarm: "The wholesale slaughter of these birds at their nesting place in Monroe County last spring when not half grown, and even before they were feathered, was disgracefully notorious at the time. One man shipped over two million of these birds out of the county and the ground was so strewn with the carcasses of young pigeons, too small for shipment, that for three weeks there was an area of several miles where such a stench arose as to sicken travelers" (Milwaukee [Wisconsin] Sentinel, 15 March 1883. Schorger 1955).
Mankind, for reasons of ignorance and greed, systematically destroyed the beech, oak, and conifer forest nesting sites of the "blue meteors," until their numbers went from billions to a single bird in a mere fifty years. Barrels containing millions of squabs and adult birds were shipped to market. Every imaginable method was used to destroy the species while every imaginable excuse was justification for a more and more rapid extermination. Perhaps the spectacular spring migrations of the Passenger Pigeon would have no place in the twenty-first century, just as no place was afforded them in the twentieth. Nonetheless, I have often wished that I could experience these titanic visions or at the very least a single living specimen.
Late in the nineteenth century and in the first decade of the twentieth, Professor Charles Ottis Whitman bred the last known flock of Passenger Pigeons. With each succeeding year and each successive death, the species diminished. Their remains were mounted, preserved in alcohol, skinned and dried, or thoughtlessly destroyed, as hope dimmed of there ever being a viable population. Finally, in the year of Whitman's death, 1910, the last remaining male died, followed in 1914 by "Martha," the last Passenger Pigeon the world would ever see. Extinction is irreversible. Or is it?
I once read an account of a young couple in 1877 using the feathers of over 1700 wild pigeons to stuff their feather bed. The practice was apparently common and may well have been encouraged by the ancient belief that a person could not die on a bed of pigeon feathers. In our current age of genetic engineering, I have started to wonder, is there an irony in the old superstition? Could the feathers of such a long-forgotten flock assist in the resurrection of the Passenger Pigeon itself? Could the genes of such feathers and preserved specimens in general be used someday in a recombinant DNA project?
We know that the complete formula of life resides in the cell; because we still have cells from the extinct birds, albeit non-living tissue, do we not therefore have the potentially legible genetic formula of Ectopistes migratorius? This formula, known as the genome, is the full nucleotide sequence of a species' DNA. The science of recombinant DNA is a cutting-edge technology; new knowledge and specific techniques are constantly evolving. But in light of the current successes in reading the human genome and the sequencing of DNA tens of millions of years old, we are fast approaching a time when we may be able to retrieve a vanished animal or plant.
Assuming that the Passenger Pigeon were to become a candidate someday for revitalization, it would be necessary to record the species genome, which requires that the total nucleotide sequence from the species' DNA be read. Before all else, therefore, the physical material must be sampled in sufficient quantities and archived in a repository for such a project and for future generations.
There are abundant potential sources of DNA. Fragments of the bird can be found in museums and private collections throughout the world. More than 1500 skins and mounted specimens have been cataloged, as well as many complete skeletons and four nearly whole bodies (Hahn 1963). Archaeological excavations frequently yield their bones, potential repositories of DNA in the ancient marrow. Considering perhaps an extreme of potential sources, I have even wondered if old bottles of vintage patent medicine might not yield a gene or two.
Wild pigeon blood was used as the primary ingredient in some bottled nineteenth-century medicines. We are fortunate, that unlike a "Jurassic" recombinant, the span of years between the Passenger Pigeon and the age of molecular biology is short, and genetic material is as yet still with us. The cells of both living and extinct creatures are much like molecular computer disks, lending themselves as do disks to a binary code and facility of reproduction. Essentially the alternating position of four amino acids parallels the positive-negative switches on a computer disk. The binary predictability of the four acids helps simplify exact sequence duplication through the laboratory process of Polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Despite the fact that a cell may have dried and mummified, the integrity of the cellular genetics tends to remain intact. The catch is to develop processes that allow the manifestation of a fully grown Velociraptor or, less ambitiously, a lost avis.
Using whatever source—blood, feathers, bones, or mounted specimens—I suspect that archiving the genome of Ectopistes migratorius would prove as interesting as it would be challenging... challenging, yet not impossible. I have long considered the territorial and behavioral commonality of the Passenger Pigeon and a possible close relative, the Mourning Dove (Zenaidura macroura). The ornithologist Elvis S. Starr discovered in 1888 that crossbreeding the Passenger Pigeon with the Mourning Dove resulted in fertile offspring. If these two species are closely related, then one method to achieve a recombinant generation might be to genetically alter a population segment of the Mourning Dove. Such a segment could be engineered, generation by generation, to match the original genetic code of the extinct bird. Specifically, those base pairs—nucleotides—common to the genome of both species would be maintained, while extracting and adding those required to match the extinct species. The first test could be through DNA- DNA hybridization to determine how far back in time these two species shared common ancestry.
Any recombinant DNA project is a monumental task. The rewards can be just as monumental. The possibility that the world may yet re-encounter a lost species ignites the imagination. Some might ask, why bring back the Passenger Pigeon? I offer two reasons: It is the quintessential symbol of pristine America. To bring this species back would foster a positive trend for humanity: giving back to the Earth what we have stolen. And I would argue that Ectopistes migratorius belongs in the North American skies as surely as the clouds and stars. To this end I urge that steps be taken to record the genome of the Passenger Pigeon. Specimens are more than shreds of genetic fabric; they are chromosomal messages from the past that need to be read and preserved. Champollion's decipherment of the hieroglyphics at Dendenra was possible only through the preservation of the Rosetta Stone. Similarly, these ancient genes, if saved now, may someday reveal their code—and return the Passenger Pigeon to the skies.
Assuming that the Passenger Pigeon were to become a candidate someday for revitalization, it would be necessary to record the species genome, which requires that the total nucleotide sequence from the species' DNA be read. Before all else, therefore, the physical material must be sampled in sufficient quantities and archived in a repository for such a project and for future generations.
There are abundant potential sources of DNA. Fragments of the bird can be found in museums and private collections throughout the world. More than 1500 skins and mounted specimens have been cataloged, as well as many complete skeletons and four nearly whole bodies (Hahn 1963). Archaeological excavations frequently yield their bones, potential repositories of DNA in the ancient marrow. Considering perhaps an extreme of potential sources, I have even wondered if old bottles of vintage patent medicine might not yield a gene or two.
Wild pigeon blood was used as the primary ingredient in some bottled nineteenth-century medicines. We are fortunate, that unlike a "Jurassic" recombinant, the span of years between the Passenger Pigeon and the age of molecular biology is short, and genetic material is as yet still with us. The cells of both living and extinct creatures are much like molecular computer disks, lending themselves as do disks to a binary code and facility of reproduction. Essentially the alternating position of four amino acids parallels the positive-negative switches on a computer disk. The binary predictability of the four acids helps simplify exact sequence duplication through the laboratory process of Polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Despite the fact that a cell may have dried and mummified, the integrity of the cellular genetics tends to remain intact. The catch is to develop processes that allow the manifestation of a fully grown Velociraptor or, less ambitiously, a lost avis.
Using whatever source—blood, feathers, bones, or mounted specimens—I suspect that archiving the genome of Ectopistes migratorius would prove as interesting as it would be challenging... challenging, yet not impossible. I have long considered the territorial and behavioral commonality of the Passenger Pigeon and a possible close relative, the Mourning Dove (Zenaidura macroura). The ornithologist Elvis S. Starr discovered in 1888 that crossbreeding the Passenger Pigeon with the Mourning Dove resulted in fertile offspring. If these two species are closely related, then one method to achieve a recombinant generation might be to genetically alter a population segment of the Mourning Dove. Such a segment could be engineered, generation by generation, to match the original genetic code of the extinct bird. Specifically, those base pairs—nucleotides—common to the genome of both species would be maintained, while extracting and adding those required to match the extinct species. The first test could be through DNA- DNA hybridization to determine how far back in time these two species shared common ancestry.
Any recombinant DNA project is a monumental task. The rewards can be just as monumental. The possibility that the world may yet re-encounter a lost species ignites the imagination. Some might ask, why bring back the Passenger Pigeon? I offer two reasons: It is the quintessential symbol of pristine America. To bring this species back would foster a positive trend for humanity: giving back to the Earth what we have stolen. And I would argue that Ectopistes migratorius belongs in the North American skies as surely as the clouds and stars. To this end I urge that steps be taken to record the genome of the Passenger Pigeon. Specimens are more than shreds of genetic fabric; they are chromosomal messages from the past that need to be read and preserved. Champollion's decipherment of the hieroglyphics at Dendenra was possible only through the preservation of the Rosetta Stone. Similarly, these ancient genes, if saved now, may someday reveal their code—and return the Passenger Pigeon to the skies.
Article originally published in Birding magazine
Volume XXVII: Number 3 June 1995
Literature Cited and Suggested Reading:
Craig, W. 1911. Emotion in the Mourning Dove and Passenger Pigeon. Auk 28: 398-427.
Hahn, P. 1963. Where Is That Vanished Bird? Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum, University of Toronto.
Herrmann, B., and S. Hummel. 1994. Ancient DNA. New York: Springer Verlag.
King, W. R. 1866. The Sportsman and Naturalist in Canada. In A. W. Schorger. 1955. The Passenger Pigeon. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.s
Mershon, W. B. 1907. The Passenger Pigeon. New York: The Outing Publishing Company.
Mitchell, M. H. 1935. The Passenger Pigeon in Ontario. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Pokagon, S. 1895. The Wild Pigeon of North America. Chautauguan, XXII.
Schorger, A. W. 1955. The Passenger Pigeon. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Sibley, C. G„ and J. E. Ahlquist. 1986. Reconstructing bird phylogeny by comparing DNAs. Scientific American 254: 82-92.
Starr, E. S. 1888. Doves. Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine 36: 698-703.
Watson, J. D., M. Gilman, J. Witkowski, and M. Zoller. 1992. Recombinant DNA. New York: Scientific American Books.
Whitman, C. O. 1919. Posthumous Works of Charles Ottis Whitman, vols. 1, 2, and 3. Washington: The Carnegie Institution of Washington.
Craig, W. 1911. Emotion in the Mourning Dove and Passenger Pigeon. Auk 28: 398-427.
Hahn, P. 1963. Where Is That Vanished Bird? Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum, University of Toronto.
Herrmann, B., and S. Hummel. 1994. Ancient DNA. New York: Springer Verlag.
King, W. R. 1866. The Sportsman and Naturalist in Canada. In A. W. Schorger. 1955. The Passenger Pigeon. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.s
Mershon, W. B. 1907. The Passenger Pigeon. New York: The Outing Publishing Company.
Mitchell, M. H. 1935. The Passenger Pigeon in Ontario. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Pokagon, S. 1895. The Wild Pigeon of North America. Chautauguan, XXII.
Schorger, A. W. 1955. The Passenger Pigeon. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Sibley, C. G„ and J. E. Ahlquist. 1986. Reconstructing bird phylogeny by comparing DNAs. Scientific American 254: 82-92.
Starr, E. S. 1888. Doves. Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine 36: 698-703.
Watson, J. D., M. Gilman, J. Witkowski, and M. Zoller. 1992. Recombinant DNA. New York: Scientific American Books.
Whitman, C. O. 1919. Posthumous Works of Charles Ottis Whitman, vols. 1, 2, and 3. Washington: The Carnegie Institution of Washington.